Sensational Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland Video

An amazing video has just gone live on the Carrera Cup Deutschland Facebook page. Shot from the front bumper of Philip Eng’s 997 Cup car, it documents a race lap of the Nordschleife behind the identical cars of Norbert Siedler and Jaap van Lagen.

I don’t want to turn into one of those Nürburgring bores, but my trip with Falken Tyres to the Nurburgring 24-Hour in 2011 was a real eye-opener. I’d never seen anything like the Carrera World Cup race at that event, and the same is true of the Carerra Cup race before this year’s 24-Hour.

The Carrera Cup race here is a 4-lap, flat-out thrash around the full 25-kilometre circuit. Starting on the Grand Prix track, the cars do almost a full lap of that before turning off into the woods and going for it over the historic Nordschleife, absolutely hell for leather.

Our video picks up the action just as the cars take to the old part. As you’ll see from this unbelievable footage, these great Porsche drivers run in close proximity throughout, and no one gives an inch. Just look how extreme Siedler has to go to get in front: and he is fighting for fourth place! Unlike the 24-Hour, there is no performance differential: all the cars are identical, and start with new tyres on the same fuel loads. There is nothing to tell them apart, save for small setup variations and driver confidence on the day.

Though the battle for the lead was just as close – victory rewarding a brilliant drive by Kevin Estre – the Nurburgring helicam followed this battle for pretty much the whole race and you could not take your eyes off it. I tweeted the race live on the Ferdinand Porsche magazine Twitter feed but even typing tweets on my iPhone was difficult, the battle was that good. If you’re wondering whether to make next year’s race, just do it. For sure we’ll be there.